Power cut and cleaning

We experienced our first American Samoa power cut this morning, darn those people who work at ASPA, wish they’d get their act together!!!! It was a good opportunity to get the kids outside and start a much needed service project…cleaning up our compound.

This is what our front yard usually looks like, I can count six of the beasts at this time. Sorry to all you dog lovers out there, but if you continue reading my blog you will realise that I am not one of them, and never will be. Apart from being disease infected, barking all night, and chasing my children, I am sick of trying to explain to my kids what the dogs are doing to each other all day, I have used excuses such as “they’re giving each other a hug”, “they’re doing balancing tricks”, and “they’re wrestling” but I am running out of explanations. Feel free to send any more ideas my way!

And this is what we just bought, hoping for a miracle (and a good nights sleep)

So anyway, with no power in the house, that means no fans, no lights (bathroom doesn’t have a window so you can’t even see to pee) etc and things heat up pretty quickly, so we went on a quick trip to the store to buy some rubber gloves and we decided to hit the front yard. The kids collected things in grocery sacks and then we emptied them into garbage bags. We filled 5 garbage bags full of stuff and were so hot that we decided to call it a day. There are lots of things that don’t fit into garbage bags, and we will have to figure out what to do with those on another day.

We had a competition to see who could find the most random things. I told the kids “Hey, look, I found an old shoe” and Hannah replied “I’ve already found two, and Daniel found one too”. Oh.

Other interesting finds included an old car battery, a broken stroller, a license plate, old paint cartons, broken windows, broken tiles, old toothbrush, knives and forks, bowls, hair barettes, and of course, the usual stuff like aluminum cans and candy wrappers. Overall, I think that Daniel won the prize for finding a dog skull! Gross.

When we were finished, we had some cleaning inside the house to do. Have to get rid of a couple of these guys…

Now, you know we’re trying to be more positive than negative, so I need to send all of the photos and good parts about our yard. When the dogs and garbage are gone, this will be an AMAZING place for our children to play. There are papaya trees, banana trees, bread fruit trees, and coconut trees. The kids love climbing trees and playing hide and seek.

Another interesting sidenote, the Samoan people bury their family members on their land, so every home has an area of the yard assigned to have the graves. Most of them are in front of the house, or at the front of the yard, and they go to a lot of effort to make them nice and have decorations and flowers on them for all to see. These are the graves in our front yard. Ours doesn’t have a roof over it, but most do.

And yes, just in case you were wondering, after our busy day of cleaning, we had just enough energy left for an ice cream cone and a quick trip to the beach to collect shells 🙂

Helen, tell them the truth as far as appropriate. Probably not what you want to hear but, it’s always a good place to start. I’ll never forget the day David and I had to give “the talk” to Rebekah and Lauren.Or maybe they’ll just get used to it and quit asking questions. 😉